Image for Jews and Communism

The five million Jews in the Russian Empire were the largest concentration of Jews in the world in 1900. Today, fewer than 200,00 Jews live in Russia. Undoubtedly, the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and the failures of Soviet communism played a major in the disintegration of the Russian Jewish population. In this course, we shall examine the changing and ambivalent relationship of Jews to communism. It began somewhat favorably but ended with Jews’ disillusion and migration in huge numbers mainly to Israel, the United States, and Germany. Ironically, Russian-speaking Jews constitute the largest ever aliyah to Israel, a state the USSR vigorously condemned. In this course, we will examine the rise and fall of Soviet communism, as well the lives of the Soviet leaders and Soviet Jews who shaped the twentieth-century.